1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to aircraft display systems and more particularly to a flight display with an enhanced touchscreen interface for providing a secondary mechanism for performing primary flight display functions.
2. Description of the Related Art
Current primary flight displays (PFDs) for aircraft use a combination of display menus, bezel buttons, and display control panels to allow the pilot to control available functions.
Emerging PFD's may use a touchscreen interface. Current capacitive or resistive touchscreen technology resolution is relatively low compared to display resolution requiring that “touchable” menu items must be relatively large. This means that existing formats or menu designs are not suitable and must be redesigned.
Current touchable user interfaces are optimized for precision operation or portable computing applications and are not suitable for the unique nature of an airplane cockpit, especially due to consideration of vibration levels, accelerations that may be experienced during aircraft maneuvers, and the critical and often urgent nature of the pilot user interface operations.